Fitch Ratings upgraded Delta Topco, the parent company of Formula 1, to a positive outlook while affirming its BB rating, demonstrating financial resilience despite the cancellation of two races in the 2026 calendar due to geopolitical conflict.
Credit ratings agency Fitch has adjusted its view on Formula 1 from Stable to Positive, signaling a realistic chance of a full credit upgrade in the near future. This change serves as a signal that lenders and investors typically read as the business getting stronger rather than weaker. Fitch affirmed Delta Topco’s existing Long-Term Issuer Default Rating at BB, and its BB+ rating on associated senior secured debt, alongside the improved outlook. Both BB and BB+ sit within what is known as sub-investment grade
or “high yield” territory, sitting below the BBB- threshold that marks the boundary of investment grade. That classification does not mean F1 is considered a poor credit risk, as companies across sport, media, and entertainment routinely carry ratings in this range. Specifically, a BB rating reflects a business Fitch views as fundamentally sound but carrying meaningful debt relative to its earnings, a distinction that matters mainly for the interest rates F1 pays to borrow and for how comfortable institutional investors are holding its debt.
Revenue Resilience Amid Disrupted 2026 Calendar
What makes the timing notable is that it comes despite F1 losing two races from its 2026 calendar after the Gulf Air Bahrain and STC Saudi Arabian Grands Prix were both cancelled this year because of the Iran-US conflict. Fitch’s central forecast still expects Formula 1’s debt relative to earnings to fall steadily over the next three years, assuming a normal 24-race calendar returns in 2027. Fitch went further in stress-testing that resilience, modelling a more severe scenario in which the Qatar Airways Qatar and Etihad Airways Abu Dhabi Grands Prix, both scheduled for December, are also cancelled. Even under that reduced calendar, Fitch expects F1’s finances to hold steady rather than deteriorate.
The rating action credited F1’s revenue structure directly for that resilience. Around 80 per cent of the sport’s annual revenue comes from multiyear contracts with media companies, race promoters, and corporate sponsors, with a contracted revenue pipeline of $15.9 billion at the end of the first quarter of 2026. This stability is precisely what F1 has been building toward since Liberty Media’s takeover, prioritising long-term contracted revenue over reliance on any single race, market, or sponsor.
Financial Forecasts Through 2029
Fitch forecasts pre-dividend free cash flow margin at 13 per cent in 2026, despite the disrupted calendar, rising to average 17 per cent across 2026 to 2029. Total revenue is forecast to grow 2 per cent in 2026, before jumping 13 per cent in 2027 as the calendar normalises, with mid-single-digit growth expected in 2028 and 2029. The agency also expects F1’s EBITDA margin, a measure of underlying profitability, to improve from 24 per cent in 2026 to 26 per cent by 2028.
Meanwhile, dividend payments to Liberty Media are projected to run between $300 million and $500 million a year through 2029, weighted toward the later years of that window. What this ultimately signals is a business that Wall Street now views as strong enough to absorb genuine geopolitical shocks without its underlying financial trajectory changing course. Race cancellations of this kind would once have been treated as a serious threat to a sports body’s finances, but here, they barely dent Fitch’s central forecast. If Fitch does move to a full ratings upgrade in the coming months, as this outlook revision suggests it might, it would mark F1 stepping closer to investment-grade territory entirely on the strength of its own commercial model.
Separately, Fitch Ratings also upgraded its rating on Argentina following the October elections that saw President Javier Milei emerge with a stronger popular mandate. Fitch reported upgrading the country’s Long-Term Foreign Currency and Local Currency Issuer Default Rating to B- from CCC+, with a stable ratings outlook, reflecting Argentina’s structurally improved fiscal and external balances, progress on economic reforms, and improved prospects for FX reserve accumulation. Fitch noted that Argentina’s foreign currency debt service has stepped up and will rise further in 2027 ahead of elections, while inflation in the country rose to 3.4% in March according to Fitch, constrained by factors including its international liquidity position, high inflation, and a record of macroeconomic instability following Milei’s 2023 election victory on promises to cut government spending and reduce triple-digit inflation.
